National Rifle Association gets Republican backing in gun control opposition

Bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines aren’t the proper response to the Dec. 14 killing of 20 elementary school children and six adults in Newtown, Conn., U.S. Senate Republicans said.

“We need real solutions to a significant problem in our country, and I’m not sure passing another law in Washington is going to actually find a real solution,” Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Sunday he opposed reinstating a ban on assault weapons. “I don’t want to say we’re one law away from solving this problem,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” A ban “didn’t work before and it won’t work in the future.”

Their comments came as National Rifle Association Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre, NRA President David Keene and former Representative Asa Hutchinson, an Arkansas Republican leading the gun-rights group’s efforts to improve school safety, rejected calls for new legislation restricting guns. They suggested instead stationing armed guards in schools, tracking mentally ill people and addressing violent video games and other forms of entertainment.

“This town wants to argue about gun control,” LaPierre said on NBC. “I don’t think it’s what will work.”

LaPierre said Congress should immediately vote to spend money to put armed guards in schools.

“If it’s crazy to call for putting police and armed security in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” LaPierre said on NBC. “I think the American people think it’s crazy not to do it. It’s the one thing that would keep people safe, and the NRA is going to try to do that.”

“It’s going to be a battle,” said Lieberman, who is retiring. “But the president, I think, and vice president, are really ready to lead the fight. It’s going to take the American people getting organized, agitated and talking to their members of Congress.”

Task Force

President Barack Obama has named Vice President Joe Biden to head a task force to look at gun regulations, mental health treatment, violence in society and other issues in the wake of the Connecticut shootings. Adam Lanza, 20, used a semiautomatic rifle to gun down the children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Lanza, who also killed his mother, Nancy, then turned the gun on himself, police said.

Obama and Democratic lawmakers, including some with top ratings from the NRA, have called for considering bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as requiring background checks for gun purchasers, including at gun shows.

In a Dec. 17-18 CNN/ORC International poll, 62 percent of respondents supported a ban on military-style assault weapons and a prohibition against high-capacity ammunition magazines. Another 95 percent favored mandatory background checks on gun buyers. The survey of 620 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Lieberman said the NRA should be willing to discuss “the availability of guns,” which he said is a contributing factor to violence. “I had hoped they’d come to the table and say everything is on the table,” he said.

LaPierre said the NRA was unlikely to get involved in the administration’s task force.

“If it’s a panel that’s just going to be made up of a bunch of people that, for the last 20 years, have been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I’m not interested in sitting on that panel,” LaPierre said on NBC.

‘Wrong Debate’

Keene said the NRA is turning its attention to what officials consider better ways to keep school children safe, such as armed guards.